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Innovative Marine Aquariums

Teenyreef's IM40 Not-So-Teeny Tank - August FTS


teenyreef

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Looking good Teeny,  sorry the chalice decided to nuke everything.   I love chalices, some day I'll try them again.   

 

 

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On 7/20/2019 at 1:24 PM, teenyreef said:

When my nitrates are at zero, all the monticaps lose their color. The idaho grape get pale brown/light lavender, and the apple green ones turn almost a mustard yellow.

First let me say the tank looks amazing! 

 

So what do you do when nitrates get to zero and you want to raise them? Feed the tank more? Dose something? 

What range do you target? 

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On 9/22/2019 at 7:13 PM, StinkyBunny said:

Covey leader to Raven

Come in Raven

Talk to me Johnnie.

 

On 9/22/2019 at 5:16 PM, Pjanssen said:

I hope you are okay , my friend. Miss seeing updates on this and the IM10

 

The Monti's I got from you last year are doing amazing. Just thought you'd like to know.

 

Lol, thanks for checking on me! I'm doing fine but busy again. I'm keeping up on water changes but fell behind for a little while. I lost the Katropora and Pink the Bear, along with one or two other small ones. But all the frags I made of the Katropora are thriving on the frag racks in the same tank, so I don't think it was water conditions. Maybe they were weakened by coral warfare and my lazy water change cycle may have been too much. But the other corals are doing fine. I'll give it a few weeks and plant one of the katropora frags back where the mother colony was.

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On 7/24/2019 at 6:27 AM, SeaFurn said:

First let me say the tank looks amazing! 

 

So what do you do when nitrates get to zero and you want to raise them? Feed the tank more? Dose something? 

What range do you target? 

Thanks!

 

Ironically, I've never had that problem in this tank, it's a little overpopulated and nitrates can run anywhere from 4 to 24 depending on how well I keep up on water changes. B

 

But in my bare bottom 30g frag tank, I do have that problem sometimes. I dose calcium nitrate every once in a while, when I notice the montipora are getting pale.

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On 7/23/2019 at 7:02 PM, markalot said:

Looking good Teeny,  sorry the chalice decided to nuke everything.   I love chalices, some day I'll try them again.   

 

 

Thanks, Mark. Yeah, I have a love/hate relationship with chalices too. I had so many die for no apparent reason, so when I have one that's doing well like this one I hate to do anything to piss it off.

On 7/24/2019 at 4:58 AM, fissues said:

Lookin' really good. 

Thank you!

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In my experience with larger colonies, they get bacterial infections that do them in. The minute they come out of the box they get iodide and potassium salt baths. I don't take any chances with them and they have their own run.

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2 hours ago, StinkyBunny said:

In my experience with larger colonies, they get bacterial infections that do them in. The minute they come out of the box they get iodide and potassium salt baths. I don't take any chances with them and they have their own run.

That's what I've been thinking...something they might have fought off under other conditions. It's interesting, the katropora was growing into the miyagi tort (and mostly winning). But once it went, everything that was katropora died within days. But the death stopped exactly at the boundary with the tort, and the tort is still fine six weeks later.

 

I also lost the large red setosa that was in the back about a month later. No real explanation again, and it happened about the same time I lost the Pinky the Bear in the opposite corner of the tank.

 

A more recent issue is all the acans are severely receded. I hope they will recover but it seems to be another indicator of general ill health in the tank. The zoas also aren't doing as well as they used to, and seem to be growing some kind of green algae or fungus where they're shaded.

 

Tonight I did a 15 gallon water change and removed the algae scrubber. It never did grow any macro algae and I wanted to eliminate it as a potential problem source. Before the water change, nitrates were at 10 and phosphates were at .08, so while it's a little higher than I'd prefer, it's not bad at all.

 

It's also possible with all the colonies getting so big, the reduction in lighting and flow at lower levels of the tank are having an effect. At least this hobby is never boring!

 

Here's a shot of the katropora just before it finished dying. I tried fragging the remaining healthy portion into several pieces, but all of them died withing the next couple of weeks. Fortunately, the previously fragged pieces are still doing great.

 

20190822_212957.jpg

 

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12 hours ago, Pjanssen said:

Sorry to hear you are having trouble with this tank. It's so frustrating trying to save things and not knowing what to do. Good luck with the Acans and Zoas

Thanks, Penny!

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Man Teeny,I hope things turn around for you. It sucks losing pieces but unfortunately it happens as we all know. I'm glad to see you are personally doing good and all is well !!! 

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21 hours ago, teenyreef said:

That's what I've been thinking...something they might have fought off under other conditions. It's interesting, the katropora was growing into the miyagi tort (and mostly winning). But once it went, everything that was katropora died within days. But the death stopped exactly at the boundary with the tort, and the tort is still fine six weeks later.

 

I also lost the large red setosa that was in the back about a month later. No real explanation again, and it happened about the same time I lost the Pinky the Bear in the opposite corner of the tank.

 

A more recent issue is all the acans are severely receded. I hope they will recover but it seems to be another indicator of general ill health in the tank. The zoas also aren't doing as well as they used to, and seem to be growing some kind of green algae or fungus where they're shaded.

 

Tonight I did a 15 gallon water change and removed the algae scrubber. It never did grow any macro algae and I wanted to eliminate it as a potential problem source. Before the water change, nitrates were at 10 and phosphates were at .08, so while it's a little higher than I'd prefer, it's not bad at all.

 

It's also possible with all the colonies getting so big, the reduction in lighting and flow at lower levels of the tank are having an effect. At least this hobby is never boring!

 

Here's a shot of the katropora just before it finished dying. I tried fragging the remaining healthy portion into several pieces, but all of them died withing the next couple of weeks. Fortunately, the previously fragged pieces are still doing great.

 

20190822_212957.jpg

 

sorry to hear of the sps struggles, @teenyreef.  the remaining corals sounds OK tho 🙂, which is a good thing.    

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Things definitely aren't right in the tank. One of the favites died within the last week and all the acans are almost gone. Some of the zoas look like they have some kind of fungus or bacteria. So far the other sps still look fine, so I don't think it's water conditions. 

 

Most of the problems seem to be lower in the tank so I'm guessing a combination of lower flow and lighting due to all the large colonies up higher. 

 

I haven't cleaned the MP-10's in a while so that's next. Then I need to remove the frag racks. After that it will be time to reduce the size of the big colonies and maybe even do some rescaping. 

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On 9/30/2019 at 9:17 PM, Reefkid88 said:

Man Teeny,I hope things turn around for you. It sucks losing pieces but unfortunately it happens as we all know. I'm glad to see you are personally doing good and all is well !!! 

 

On 9/30/2019 at 9:20 PM, mitten_reef said:

sorry to hear of the sps struggles, @teenyreef.  the remaining corals sounds OK tho 🙂, which is a good thing.    

 

On 9/30/2019 at 9:17 PM, Reefkid88 said:

Man Teeny,I hope things turn around for you. It sucks losing pieces but unfortunately it happens as we all know. I'm glad to see you are personally doing good and all is well !!! 

Thanks! It sucks to lose corals, especially ones that are only in this tank. But I'm glad to be learning about the problems that come with an overcrowded tank. It definitely gives me a new perspective on how to plan the scape for my next new tank. 

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Hi Teeny,

 

having the Katropora die would set off alarm bells for me, that acro is one rugged beast.   Flow could be the issue, but double check for anything else in my opinion, and maybe run extra carbon to see what happens?    In my latest goof in the 150 the setosa is one of the few monties that didn't show any stress.  The big katropora did fine while the frags started to STN but then stopped as I fixed the KH and PO4 issues.   

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Oh so sorry to hear all of this. It's so disappointing to lose livestock, especially when you worked so hard to get them to where they were. I'm confident though that you will figure things out and have an amazing reef again.

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On 10/3/2019 at 7:54 AM, markalot said:

Hi Teeny,

 

having the Katropora die would set off alarm bells for me, that acro is one rugged beast.   Flow could be the issue, but double check for anything else in my opinion, and maybe run extra carbon to see what happens?    In my latest goof in the 150 the setosa is one of the few monties that didn't show any stress.  The big katropora did fine while the frags started to STN but then stopped as I fixed the KH and PO4 issues.   

I agree. The interesting thing is that all the katropora frags I made a month earlier kept right on growing strong in the same tank. So there was something going on in that particular location with that one colony. Alk has been fairly steady, slowly going up and down between 6.8 and 8.0 over a period of weeks as I got around to measuring and then tweaking the doser.

 

Interestingly, the setosa was one of the other corals in this tank that died after the katropora. 

On 10/3/2019 at 8:56 AM, Pjanssen said:

Oh so sorry to hear all of this. It's so disappointing to lose livestock, especially when you worked so hard to get them to where they were. I'm confident though that you will figure things out and have an amazing reef again.

Thanks, Penny! 

 

After a few more weeks, it definitely seems like flow and light has been an issue, along with less-than-perfectly-regular water changes. Things seem to have been the worst for the acans and zoas in the lower middle area of the tank, which was getting almost no flow and very little light due to the growth of the big sps colonies up above.

 

I've been keeping up with bigger water changes, stirred up and vacuumed as much of the sand as I could reach without breaking all the corals, and moved some of the zoas into the frag tank to make more room to spread things out into the lighter/higher flow areas of the tank.

 

So far, the acans, which were almost gone, have stabilized and haven't gotten worse in a couple weeks now. They're still skin and bones but I still have hope. The other problem has been the big zoa rocks, which got coated with cyano and algae and almost died. I've treated them with lugols, followed by a light peroxide bath a few days later. I don't know if they will recover, though. They are still there but won't open up at all...I may try the Furan zoa pox remedy just as a last resort if nothing improves later this week.

 

Enough of the depressing stuff...the other corals that survived are doing well and still growing fast. Here are some new pics!

 

2019-10-19 IM40 FTS:

2019-10-19 IM40 FTS

 

2019-10-19 IM40 Top Down:

2019-10-19 IM40 Top Down

 

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